Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Squeaking under the wire

That's me, doing my daily NaBloPoMo post before midnight tonight so you don't forget, and the Dems, who have managed to gain control of the Senate as well as the House, as they just announced (this is Wednesday night) that Democrat James Webb beat incumbent Republican George "Macaca" Allen by a hair in Virginia. This beats even my rosiest expectations (winning back the House but not the Senate), and it's a sweet counterpoint to how I felt two years ago when it seemed Kerry had a good shot but Shitforbrains won by taking Ohio. Boy was that disappointing, especially since I was mired in the Deep South at the time. Now all I can say is... YESSSSSSS! I can't believe how caught up I got. Toward the end i was devouring politicalwire.com and electoral-vote.com, and last night I even printed out some score sheets for tracking the hot races like on Oscar night -- though CNN had a terrific personal tracking page as well. I certainly didn't get this worked up about the World Series, at least not this year, as I realized I'm pretty provincial and actually don't much care who wins if the Red Sox or Yankees aren't involved or directly affected. And of course Deval Patrick is the new governor. Sarah said something sweet... when I told her Deval Patrick had won, she pumped her six-year-old fist and said "YESSS!" In some amusement I asked her why she wanted him to win, and she replied seriously that she liked him because he looks like Martin Luther King Jr. "and he's a good guy." Right on, girl. AND Rumsfeld just got the old heave-ho and about fucking time, though it would have actually helped the GOP cause if they had done it a few weeks ago. But hey -- "Rummy, yer doin a great job!" So now all the Dems have to do is get us out of Iraq in a couple of months and then Iraqis as well as Americans will live happily ever after. Right? Well, maybe things will be fine even if we do "cut and run" ASAP. As Bill Maher pointed out on Larry King tonight, the people who are making dire predictions of civil war and Mideast chaos if we do that are the same people who confidently said there were WMD in Iraq, that the insurgency was in its last throes, etc., etc.